Jonathan brought with him a tall, distinguished looking dark-haired woman some years younger than he whom he introduced as his sister Sarah. She got a hug and twirl from Thomas as though they were still merely boy and girl sporting themselves in the garden, not a Duke and clergyman's sister in a huge marble foyer which would have rivaled that of any royal palace.
Charlotte noticed at once that none of them addressed the Duke by his title, but Thomas or even Tommy. The ladies tugged him by his hands into tea, while the men brought she and Elizabeth into the small wine-colored drawing room and made themselves at home as though they lived there themselves.
She was predisposed not to like them, she had to admit, thinking they were part of a loose set he had fallen in with, thus leading to his impecuniousness.
But the truth was that after a few moments her stiff, chilly formality simply thawed under their jovial kindness. Once again she found herself comparing Herbert to these dapper, gifted men, and found Paxton wanting.
The trouble was, she also found herself lacking as well. They did their best to make her feel included, but much of what they spoke about made no sense to her.
Slavery, the question of chimney sweeps, the rights of women, the need for educational reforms, all of it jumbled in her mind, making her head pound. She began to grow fractious under what she perceived as their pitying looks and air of superiority, she who had never before been condescended to in such a manner before.
"And have you heard about Napoleon's Russian campaign?" Jonathan asked.
Thomas nodded. "Over a quarter of a million dead, by all accounts. And the great general just left them there to perish, while he raced back to Paris to bolster up his power. If that doesn't tell the French everything they need to know about their so-called leader, nothing else will."
Clifford shook his head slowly. "I've heard he's still conscripting, old men and young boys now. Any other man would give up. He seems determined to press on until the end."
"I've had a letter from Blake in Portugal," Jonathan said, patting his pockets and drawing out the much-crinkled missive.
Thomas shot him a warning look. "We can share it later," he said in clipped tones.
"Oh, er, yes, of course," Jonathan said, looking at Charlotte's carefully neutral expression and stuffing the paper back into his sleeve.
"Have you read his paper on sanitation yet?" Clifford said to Thomas.
The Duke gave his other friend a quelling look. "Er, no. Not yet. More tea, anyone?"
"Is this man Blake a particular friend of yours?" Charlotte asked without much interest, trying only to fill the silence which had suddenly descended upon the room.
Thomas nodded as he brought empty cup to her to refill. "Yes. Dr. Blake Sanderson. His serving in the Peninsula at the moment."
Jonathan began to try to elaborate helpfully. "He enlisted at the start of the war, with--"
"Cake?" Thomas offered, now passing around the plate himself.
Her eyebrows rose, but his friends seemed to take the hint, and desperately sought another topic of conversation which might interest the increasingly piqued-looking bride-to-be.
Charlotte shot her fiance an irritated look. Really, how could he make such a show of her? He might as well have shouted right out loud how terrible a hostess she was.
"And what news of the bill being put forward on Catholic Emancipation?" Sarah said almost desperately.
"We shall see when the Houses sit again."
"Though surely as a Radical, you can do no good at all," Charlotte observed in a dismissive tone, plopping two more sugar lumps into her own cup with an insouciant air.
"Oh? And what would lead you to that conclusions, pray?" Thomas asked quietly, though she could once again see the tic in his cheek which proclaimed his irritation as loudly as a raised voice.
In fact she almost wished he would shout as her father did, lose his temper, show some sort of passion for something. She had the feeling he would really look most rousing with his feathers ruffled. His hair and clothes rumpled...
She quashed the heated thought and looked down her long nose at Thomas, every inch the superior Tory. "One must be a party man to have power. Safety in numbers, don't you know?"
"More like mindless fear, and a sheep-like slavishness to the old order. Why have we gone through war and revolution if all we're going to end up with is the same old world we had before?"
Jonathan cleared his throat and nodded. "He's right, you know. Much needed to be changed before the war. Even more will have to be once it's finally over."
"Stuff and nonsense," Charlotte said with a lift of her chin, repeating what she had overheard her father say often enough. "The Tories have been in power for, oh, as long as any of us can remember. Everything is just fine. If those wretched revolutionaries hadn't started causing so much trouble, we would all be at peace now, and could have continued enjoying all the marvelous fashions from Paris."
Vanessa rolled her eyes heavenward, while Sarah choked on her piece of cake and clamped her napkin over her mouth in an effort to disguise a most unladylike noise reminiscent of a snort.
"Which revolutionaries, my dear?" Thomas asked with interest. "The American ones, or the French?"
"Oh pooh, what does it matter?" she said in a bored tone. "Troublemakers, the lot of them."
"Yes, well, that's as may be--"
She glared at her fiance. "Surely you can't possibly approve of Robespierre and the guillotine?"
Thomas shook his head and said mildly, "No, indeed not, but the original sentiments of the French revolution were noble enough, and derived, if I may say so, from our own English writers and philosophers, such as John Locke. Let us not forget that England had a civil war and revolution less than one hundred and fifty years ago. And is fortunate enough as a result to have a government run mainly by ordinary men, not kings."
"Or dukes?" she sniped.
He shook his head again. "No, indeed. Not dukes either. But then my family were ordinary in those days. 'And when Adam ploughed and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?'" he said, reciting the common old adage.
Jonathan and his sister nodded approvingly, but Clifford Stone could see Charlotte tensing as if for another fight.
"Well, as jolly as this is," Clifford said in his heartiest tones, slapping his thighs as he rose, "I believe the ladies have much to arrange before the big day."
Elizabeth nodded gratefully. "Yes, indeed. It's not every day my brother gets married, now is it? Do please let me help you with those cups, Charlotte, and then we can show Vanessa and Sarah all that we have organized thus far."
"Splendid," Vanessa agreed. "Go on, my dears, off you go to read Blake's letter."
Thomas looked mildly concerned. "Are you sure you don't need--"
"Nonsense, my dear Thomas," the auburn woman laughed. "I'm sure Charlotte has had more than enough of your interference."
Never had a truer word been spoken, Charlotte thought with a scowl.
Thomas caught her glowering look and decided to beat a hasty retreat. "Clifford, coming?"
"Yes, indeed." He pecked his wife on the cheek, and hurried after him.
Jonathan looked inclined to linger, no doubt to try to act as peacemaker, but Vanessa and Sarah sensed Charlotte's bad humor even if they couldn't guess the cause of it, and shooed the vicar into the Duke's library.
Once the four women were alone, the visitors began to go through all the items on display in the drawing room, exclaiming over her gown and jewels.
"Oh, just look," Sarah said in awed tones. "It must have been Mama Eltham's?"
"Indeed. That's what the Duke says," Charlotte said frostily.
Elizabeth gave a pained look and said nothing.
It irked Charlotte that she was being made a virgin sacrifice upon the altar of the Eltham family, but decided it wasn't the poor girl's fault if her brother couldn't manage their affairs better. She decided to make a conscious effort to be kinder to the rather graceless girl, as she
viewed her.
"Yes, it is rather pretty," she conceded, resorting to vast understatement.
The gown was exquisite, like the shepherdess-style gowns so popular thirty years before, with flounces of Brussels lace. The pale blue sash had faded over time, so Charlotte was not sure what accessories she should use instead, and asked their opinion.
"Any color will look well with white. Why not decided upon the jewels first?" Sarah suggested. "Then you can choose the accoutrements."
"The dress is lovely, but I'm sure it's not as fine as yours must have been," Charlotte said to Vanessa, trying to befriend the interesting if imposing woman.
She gave an airy wave. "Bless you no, dear. My marriage was, er, shall we say, under some rather difficult circumstances. All I had was a plain dove gray gown."
Sarah gave Vanessa a sympathetic smile, but Charlotte could feel herself stiffening. Really, what sort of people was Thomas permitting in his house?
She looked over the jewels, a full set each of rubies, pearls, sapphires, and emeralds. The diamonds were so fine, they rivaled the chandeliers in the formal rooms of the house. She was totally at a loss as to which to choose. She didn't want to appear too greedy, or gaudy.
"Pearls are the tradition, so I shall have them," she said at last, though her eyes kept glancing up and down at the row of cases.
"You don't sound so sure," Vanessa observed quietly.
"It's just that the emeralds are lovely. They remind me of the Duke's eyes." She flushed with color at the admission, and then pointed to the sapphires, which were in a much more modern setting that she might have expected given that all the items were supposed to have belonged to the former duchess. "Just as these are like mine."
"Whatever you like. It's your choice," Elizabeth reassured her with a kind smile. "The sapphires do seem perfect for you, though, don't they."
Charlotte would have asked what they planned to wear, in an attempt to be polite to the women, but just then a fresh tea tray arrived. She looked from to the other, and realized that again they expected her to pour.
She sighed and moved into place behind the small table. This was another thing that was going to take some getting used to. Not that the servants had been anything except kind and patient with her. It was just that she has assumed with pride that she knew everything about running a household.
She now recognized that many of the simplest tasks her aunt had taken upon herself as her prerogative, jealously guarding them as if she were the woman of the household, and not merely her chaperone.
Now all of that would change. She was to be a wife, and felt as unsophisticated as the greenest girl from the country.
Charlotte tried to make small talk with her company, but just as it had been before, it was heavy weather trying to find any topics they had in common.
She was next scandalized by Vanessa, who began to talk of epidemics of cholera and typhus as if they were the most natural topics of conversation over the tea table, describing the symptoms in all too gruesome detail until Charlotte put down her cup and saucer with a grimace.
"I'm sorry. Why don't we talk about how you will wear your hair?" Vanessa suggested when she saw her revulsed reaction.
But it was clear that these women were unlike any others of her acquaintance when Elizabeth began to chat about ways of preventing children from getting rickets.
Charlotte sighed noisily with evident irritation until they finally got the hint, and reverted to that tried and true topic, the weather, still wintry, but dry.
She tolerated this fairly well, or so she thought, for a few moments longer. The final straw came when Sarah asked both of her companions to subscribe to a special medical clinic for prostitutes in London's West End which they were setting up. Charlotte dropped the teacup she had been about to resume drinking from with a splatter and clatter, and stood up quickly, her face flushed.
She grabbed a linen napkin and began to dab at her gray day gown. "Pray excuse me. Sorry to be so clumsy. I must tidy myself. I shall send in a servant to clean up the mess."
"Nonsense, 'tis nothing," Sarah said breezily, as she began to mop up the spill herself.
Charlotte made a beeline for the door, and practically slammed it behind her. She stood there panting in an agony of indecision. Where could she go? She felt like a caged panther, eager to be out and free.
But there would be no freedom in her marriage. HIS friends, HIS family, his house, his interests, his money and property now. There was nothing of hers any longer, and she was expected to accept her fate meekly, as either a daughter, or a wife.
She heaved a huge sigh, and swallowed hard to fight back the tears. And to think that less than a week ago she had considered herself to be the most fortunate of women...
Until a grievous error and abortive elopement had made her realize just how powerless she was in the world. How powerless all women were, she reflected, her stomach heaving at the thought.
Knowing this now, how on earth could she marry Thomas Eltham? Or indeed any man?
Yet how could she stay at home with a tyrant of a father who had shown himself all too eager to be rid of her? That was even assuming he were to permit her such an indulgence.
That was most unlikely given how much he had his heart set upon her marrying a Duke, and how much gossip there would be in the district if she dared try to break it off.
She stood wringing her hands together, darting glances right and left in her search for some means of escape.
Everyone expected her to marry Thomas Eltham.
What on earth was she to do?
CHAPTER SIX
Distraught, Charlotte hovered in the foyer in an agony of indecision. She knew she had to do something, and quickly. She steadied herself, tugging her cloying tea-stained skirts away from her thighs.
She would ask for the carriage to take her home. The splattered dove-gray gown would be the perfect excuse to get out of this mad house.
But she couldn't just go without saying farewell to the Duke, now could she? She wasn't that much of a coward, surely.
She ventured down the corridor, and tapped on the library door. She overheard laughter and merriment and the sound of raised male voices. When there was no reply however, she knocked again, then poked her head around the portal. She was horrified to see all three young men in a state of partial undress, including the vicar.
"I beg your pardon, I-"
Charlotte choked at the sight of three bare chests, with some sort of bizarre colored pattern marked upon them. She fled out of the library then, straight through the main hall, and out the back of the house toward the stable block.
What on earth were they, Satan worshippers? Members of one of the more debauched gentlemen's clubs in London that she had heard her Aunt Margaret and her friend Agnes whisper about? Where virgins were sacrificed to the insatiable lust of the Rakes who attended...
Her stomach heaving, she caught the attention of the head groom, who agreed to have her driven home instantly.
She was just heading down the long gravel-covered drive away from the fine neo-Classical house when the Duke appeared on the front lawn and waved down the carriage. He had hastily donned his shirt and jacket, and with his bared throat and lightly tanned chest peeping out, he looked the most youthful and handsome she had ever seen him.
Boyish, almost, she thought wistfully.
But that was just the trouble. Men like him could be charming if they so chose... Though he had never chosen to be charming before they had become engaged, she noted in all fairness. It was not as if he had a reputation as a known seducer. She decided he probably confined his raking to the relative anonymity of the Ton.
He stepped up to the window and said breathlessly, "I'm sorry we were, er, indisposed when you came to the study. You're going home, I would guess. Is there aught amiss?"
"No, Your Grace, nothing apart from my frock," she replied stiffly, indicating the damp stains.
"Ah, I see." He frowned. "It wasn't one of
the servants, was it?"
"No, not at all. It was my own stupid fault."
He looked at her consideringly for a moment, then leapt into the carriage and tapped on the roof with his knuckles. "Drive on."
"There's no need to come with me, Your Grace."
"I know that. I choose to come with you. And I would appreciate it if you would kindly use my given name. I would like it if we could at least try to be friends, Charlotte."
She glared at him. "I'm sure there's something you would rather be doing than coming home with me. I give you my word I will not try to fly the coop."
The Rakehell Regency Romance Series Boxed Set 1 Page 40
